County 2010 budget will resemble 2009

Wahkiakum County's 2010 Current Expense Fund budget should look a lot like the budget for 2009: Commissioners Dan Cothren, Blair Brady and Lisa Marsyla have asked department heads to prepare 2010 budgets that stay within their 2009 numbers.

While this means no expansion of service in the courthouse offices, it should also mean no reductions in staff, commissioners said Tuesday.

Commissioners and department heads have just come off a week of meetings in which the department heads presented proposed budgets that included funding requests for expenses not covered in this year's budget.

If the commissioners were to approve those requests, the Current Expense Fund, which finances most courthouse departments, would have a deficit of approximately $341,000, Commissioners Brady and Marsyla said Tuesday.

Budgets for departments not included in the Current Expense Fund aren't limited to that restriction, Marsyla said. These departments include County Road and Health and Human Services.

The county's revenue picture doesn't look as bad now as it did earlier this year, Marsyla said.

Commissioners will divert money from the County Road Fund to Current Expense in 2010, Brady said. The county diverted $100,000 this year.

The state Department of Natural Resources is also going to try to find one or two small timber sales that will yield $250,000 or more in addition to the $886,000 expected from the one contract on the books to harvest county trust timber in 2009.

"The revenue picture looks better than we once thought," Marsyla said. "I just think it's not as dire as it once was."

"We're not making cuts, but I don't see how we can make any increases," Brady said.

Copies of the preliminary budget are supposed to be available to the public from the auditor's office by the end of the business day Monday. They will, however, be general in nature and subject to change when the commission opens its budget hearing 9:30 a.m. on December 7.

Marsyla said she will do a trend analysis going back to 2001 for various departments. This should help identify true spending needs, she said.